Zac's Birthday and Grandma's Visit

Thursday was Zac's birthday. Sadly he was gone from about 7am to 7pm so I had to be a little tricky to make it feel like his birthday. He opened the fantastic presents from his parents while we ate our eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast.
If you ever wonder why Zac is so well dressed it is because of his parents. They keep him up to date with the newest, best lookin dress clothes around. And as you can see, he gets excited about new clothes! Thanks Mom and Dad Daniels!

That morning me and Teagan brought peanut butter bars to Zac's class as part of the celebration, everyone loved it, who wouldn't want to be in elementary school again. :) They were so good! Thanks for the recipe Julie!

Friday we anxiously waited for my mom to come into town. Teagan wanted to wait outside. He insisted on wearing his Toy Story Beanie on the back of his head, crackin me up!

When my mom arrived we decided that since it was only 1:30 we should go to the wild animal park. It was such a great time. Teagan LOVES his Grandma Packer.

I'm pretty sure she loves him too, she even took him on the carousel and bought him some little toy animals (later used as leverage to get him to go potty). :)

That night Mom took us out for Zac's birthday dinner at Red Robin. It was delicious and really fun to get out. Thanks mom!


Saturday me and my mom went for a run in the rain. It was VERY wet outside and we were soaked to the bone. It was nice to have a running buddy!

Since it was raining ALL day Saturday we aborted our plan to go to seaworld and hit the samples at Costco and the mall instead. We played lots of pinochle and Zac grilled delicious steaks. It was an all around great weekend! So much fun.

You are, my biggest fan!

For nearly the first two years of Teagan's life he preferred Zac about a million times more than me. I always loved seeing how much love Teag and Zac had together. It makes me happy to have such a happy family, but I was a little jealous that he didn't show much interest in me. C'mon I spend the majority of my time and effort making his life comfortable and happy.

Well maybe his age brought wisdom, but he is my little buddy now. We have so much fun together and I love that he comes up to just give me hugs and kisses and always tells me "mommy tease!!!....come pway!!!" I love spending time with him and going on our little adventures around San Diego.

I love that he imitates me.... As a wise woman named mom once told me and my sisters growing up that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." She is still right. :)

He put on my tennis shoes to go out and exercise. Yeah! Hopefully I'm teaching him how important it is to be active. :) PS aren't my new shoes awesome!

I'm teaching him concentration.

I'm teaching him about hygiene and good looks, not that he needs any help with the looks. :)

I'm teaching him to make the cutest frown ever so I can't stand getting mad at him when he makes this face.

hehe, I love this boy WAY too much! Especially since he accomplished a full blown poop on the potty last night!!! (insert happy dance from me and Zac here!) He is such a good boy and he's so forgiving, thank goodness this little treasure was sent to us.

Help Please!

Teagan is doing pretty dang good, but today has been really hard. Since this morning I've known that he needs to go #2. He'll strip off his underwear and run to the potty and when he gets close to the bathroom he starts crying "no, no" and run back to get his undies on. He has told me 40-50 times that he needs to go today with about 35 of those times resulting in nothing. It is driving me nuts!

I try to be patient. I just run him into the bathroom when he tells me it's time. I try to get him on the potty before he has a chance to think about it, but he will only sit there for about 1 second before he tells me he's all done.

I feel bad for him, he's got this worried expression on cause he's holding back and I'm sure it doesn't feel pleasant.

We've tried lots of things. I even made him a magic wand to hold while he goes so it's "not scary and doesn't hurt." I've even thought about letting him get started in the underwear and letting him finish via potty, but he rips off his underwear first so that won't work. Suggestions are welcome, please. Is this going to just go away, should I just stick to it and keep on with the patience? I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! :)

Potty Fun

These details are unnecessary for the general public, but I want to make record of it so I can be reminded with my next child!

So anyone who has a facebook already has heard, but we are officially potty training Teagan. I wasn't planning on it, it just sort of happened. We have a little potty that he's been getting used to, but he'd never actually gone on there. I was really hoping for this summer when he's 2.5 and I'm out of school, but now is good too. Friday morning I went to change his diaper before his nap and it was pretty dry and I asked him if he wanted to go potty. He enthusiastically replied "YES!!!!!!!!"

A little dribble came out, he got lots and lots of praise. We called daddy and grandma, then he wanted to go again. He peed A LOT the next time so we headed off to Wal-mart to buy underwear. His diaper stayed dry the whole time. Throughout the day I just took him potty every 20 or 30 minutes and he was LOVING it, he was getting treats doing stickers and it was fun. We got those foam stickers at walmart for him, every time he goes he gets to do stickers and tape them up on the wall, fun for him AND it serves as a reminder without me nagging him all day.

Things got rough Saturday, he didn't want to sit on it anymore, I felt like I had to bribe him and almost force him to go and let me tell you POWER STRUGGLES ARE NOT the way!!!

I took the advice of a friend and downloaded a "potty train in 3 days" e-book. It was and is SO helpful. Instead of taking him every 30 minutes I just tell him "Let mommy know when it's time to go pee or poo, OK!" about 100 times a day. I also ask him "is your underwear dry?" a ton and if he replies yes then I cheer and praise him for being such a big boy.

The first few times after I stopped forcing him onto the potty he had accidents, but I always stay within a few feet of him so as soon as I saw it happening I'd say "hurry, hurry, you need to go pee on the potty!" in an excited, happy voice. It only took 3 accidents for it to click. He is in charge of knowing and recognizing when it's time to go, at least he thinks so. He hasn't had an accident since. He even made it through the night in underwear, I woke up during the night twice when I heard him moving around in bed and took him to the potty, he peed and even clapped for himself with his eyes closed, it was SO cute!

This is one of his signals that it's time to go, the worried expression and grabbing of the privates. Today he has been telling us "pee pee" or "poo poo" when it's time. Hopefully we can eventually work our way into him going by himself, but for now I'm just glad diapers are OVER!

Since he was doing well we decided to experiment with taking him in public by going to church today. He did great. We have a "potty bag" that I brought with stickers and candy and his little potty seat and he went a couple times. I don't really want to take the potty chair everywhere, but he'd fall right into the huge toilet and it's scary, how do other people deal with that issue with little ones?

One problem we have is that he only wants to wear the buzz lightyear underwear and we only have 2 of those so I imagine I'll be doing a lot of wash! Pinching that tiny hiney is pretty irresistible too!

With the e-book I downloaded you get 3 downloads for the price of one, if anyone is interested in having it let me know, they expire Tuesday and I'd hate for them to go to waste!

Oh Teagan.

Teagan has one heck of a personality. He can be so silly, so sweet, so stubborn...keeps me on my toes. Anywho, here are some fun pictures that show a little more about what he is all about.

Me and Zac are in the market for new running shoes and while we were at Big 5 Teagan got VERY attached to the baseball equipment. It was so cute. he was a little scary with that bat though.
Lately he loves to play doctor with Zac. He gets Zac's stethescope and wants to have Zac listen to his heart...

and lungs. He'll sit very still and be very quiet for Zac, so I do know that it is possible for him to relax!

I recently found a rice bag that my little sister Rachel gave me. Teagan immediately wanted it saying "baby, baby." For some reason he thinks it's a baby and he treats it like one. He packs it around and if he leaves it somewhere he gets really worried and starts calling for his baby and looking for it.

Here he is tucking it into bed for a nap (sorry it's so fuzzy).

Kiss goodnight.

He is also rather attached to Zac's Enlish --> Portuguese dictionary. He has been "reading" it all day. He especially loves "studying" in his mini desk. (Isn't it adorable??? A lady I tutor for gave it to him).

:)

Teagan is a fun little boy to be around!

No thanks on the temper tantrums!

Today was interesting. All morning me and Teagan hung out around the house. He was so patient while I exercised and just played with his trucks. He helped me clean both bathrooms and was ecstatic to be able to help with laundry detergent. He was sweet and we had fun.

Then I got out some grapes for us to share. He stuck one in his mouth, somehow bit out most of the inside and spit out the peel and handed it to me "yuck, mom?" This means, mom I think this is gross so I want you to eat it for me. I reply, " no thanks, you need to eat the whole grape before you get another."

Maybe he was out of patience or something because he pitched the biggest fit I've ever witnessed from him. from about 12:00pm to 12:30pm he sat/layed on the couch screaming because he didn't want to eat his unfinished grape. It sat in a bowl next to him and he howled "no mommy, no! Yuck mommy, please, grandma!" and other things the whole time (maybe he thought one of his grandmas would rescue him???).

I had moved on to other things and was trying to not give him attention for his bad behavior. I'd occasionally go ask him if he was going to eat the grape so he could have his PB&J, he just continued his howling so I would walk away. Of course the sobbing was taking it's toll on me and I wanted to give in bad! 30 minutes is a long time to listen to your baby cry and scream over a silly little grape that isn't really that big of a deal, but of course it was the principle of the matter. I told him to do something so I had to follow through.

After 30 minutes I called Zac for some advice and help because I was starting to loose my cool. Zac talked to Teagan, told him the same thing that I did and that he needed to be obedient. Teagan stuck out his lip and frowned, but then picked up the half-eaten grape and ate it, finally.

Man, I am so grateful that I'm not in this alone. I can't imagine what it's like to take care of a toddler on your own, or any kid for that matter. I'm so grateful that Zac supports me and is my partner in trying to raise a well-behaved, happy child. It's so hard and I have no idea what I'm doing!

In conclusion, I do not like tantrums and I have a great husband.

The End.

DISNEYLAND

Teagan and I were SOOO excited and lucky to be able to go to Disneyland yesterday. My mom was able to get a free ticket and so she let me use it. We marched right in and went to take our picture in front of the huge castle and my camera wouldn't work. AHHHHHHH! It said "card error." I took the card out, blew on it, blew in the camera, and repeated those steps multiple times but nothing would work. This has happened before and I can usually fix it by just blowing on the card, but it wasn't working.

I decided that a broken camera would not ruin our day so we proceeded to begin our adventure on Dumbo. Once we were on the ride I realized that I couldn't accept the idea that we would have no pictures at Disneyland so I leaned over to Teagan and asked him if he thought we should pray that the camera would be fixed. He replied with an enthusiastic "Yeah!" So while in air we said a little prayer that the camera would get fixed. After the prayer I took it out and it turned on and worked like nothing was ever wrong! So when you look at these pictures, I hope you're as grateful for them as I am!!!!

Casey Jr. Train Ride...so fun!
Storybook boat ride. All the people on the boat were exclaiming how cute he was so of course he flashed that handsome smile to win them over even more!

I do not like the teacups in my old age. Just a little to round and round for my brain, but little Mr. loves them so we went.

He was trying SO hard to turn the wheel, funny boy!

He loved the carousel and whinnied like a horse a lot of the time on the ride! I thought his horse had a scary face, but he insisted on using that one. :)

Of course the all time favorite ride is Buzz Lightyear. The second I told him we were going to Disneyland he started making gun noises and found his buzz lightyear action figure. He was so excited and continued making gun until we actually went on the ride. We were lucky to have SHORT lines for every ride so we rode this one 5 or 6 times throughout the day.

I think his favorite part was the HUGE Buzz that talks to you while you wait in line. We would just hang out in that room while Teagan stared, awestruck at his hero.

We got to visit toon town which was so fun for Teagan. He loved exploring and climbing on everything.

We went into Micky's house to explore and kept seeing signs that said "this way to Mickey." I didn't actually think Mickey mouse was going to be in his house!!!!! I was every bit as excited as Teagan to meet him! Teagan LOVED Mickey. He gave him a hug and mostly just smiled at him every time he moved. Can you imagine being a little kid. You see this Huge happy looking stuffed animal that is alive, what a dream come true!

PS- do you like the awesome camera holder belt attachment I was using, it was so convenient, and attractive!

He loved playing on the cars in toon town and hung out there for quite a while.

I couldn't get pictures of everything since I was the only adult. Here are some other highlights:

-After each ride ended I would ask Teagan if he liked it and he'd reply "YEAH!" Most the times he wanted to go again and again.

-I found out that teagan made the height limit for the Matterhorn so we rode it. For those of you who don't know, it is a pretty fast roller coaster. Afterwards I asked him if he liked it and he replied "nope." Then I asked him if he wanted to ride it again and he said "nope, nope," and started making the gun noises for the Buzz ride. Apparently he isn't ready for roller coasters yet. :)

After we'd been there for 4 hours or so he started really needing his nap. I knew it was time to go when I asked him If he wanted to go home and he could hardly keep his eyes open enough to say "nope." I asked him if he wanted to go on another ride and he said "yep." About 10 seconds later he fell asleep and continued to sleep for 3 hours!

We both had so much fun together, it would have been fun to have Zac and my mom be able to come too, but we were thrilled just to have the chance.

My mom gave me an early birthday present of upgrading my ticket to a season pass so I'm SOOOOO excited to be able to back again. There is so much that we weren't able to do and I can't wait to go back. THANK YOU MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm SOOOO excited!

You get into Disneyland for free on your birthday so I think we'll go on Zac's birthday and hopefully save enough to upgrade his to a season pass too!

I think I might have overused exclamation marks in this, but I couldn't hardly help myself. :)